Rendition Institution

This account in Salon by former rendition prisoner, Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, must be read. Note the details all the way along: reports coming from Washington, newly fitted cells placed adjacent to each other apparently in an airplane hangar, silent and masked American guards in black, medical and psychiatric staff, special equipment, innocent victims, etc.

Despite what some say in the US public discourse on torture, all torture is psychological, whether physical or non-physical. Torture is about breaking the human will and destroying an individual's autonomy through extreme psychological and physical pain and humiliation. This makes it a difficult thing to pinpoint with definitional accuracy, since some victims are capable of resisting longer than others and particular techniques may affect victims in different ways. The account relayed here by Bashmilah is torture. And this is an institutionalized system of torture, which is bound to torture innocents. There is no question.